By promoting the citizen-science project Slovak Flora on the iNaturalist platform, we are gaining new members from the public who, through their georeferenced photographs, contribute to understanding the distribution of individual species of vascular plants. Through expert verification of these observations, we obtain reliable data that we further use in scientific studies and in preparing volumes of the Flora of Slovakia monograph.
Thanks to volunteers from the general public, we have collected tens of thousands of records on the distribution of vascular plant taxa in Slovakia. These contributions help us learn more about the flora of poorly explored areas of Slovakia, discover new locations of threatened species, and document the spread of non-native plants into new regions. Data from non-professional volunteer contributors help us, for example, complete the picture of the distribution of certain species processed in upcoming volumes of the Flora of Slovakia. In another study, these observations enabled us to detect and verify the first occurrences of new neophytes in Slovakia, discoveries that, without public participation, we would likely have made much later.
